Monday, March 08, 2010

Even Further Thoughts on Alpha Males

I fear you neglect three points in generalizing about the creature Today's Woman:

1) You are actually only talking about the (heartbreakingly large) subset of women who have been abandoned or neglected by their fathers. The whole wanting to connect with the guy who blows you off thing pretty much reduces to that. Women who have always had close and affectionate relationships with their father find the bad boy attractions of their friends mystifying and the guy who ignores them irrelevant.

2) The phenomenon you describe precisely inverts over time. The 20-year old is thrilled by the cool older guy who doesn't remember her name. The 30-year old is mildly miffed... maybe mildly intrigued. The 40-year old mom is just annoyed - though she DOES like that nice Dad who knows her childrens' name, and thinks the guy who remembered and praised her homemade dip from last year's Super Bowl party is actually quite charming. The 50-year old is positively delighted by the guy who notices her shoes, and the 60-year old is smitten by the guy who simply remembers her name.

3) Do not underestimate the power of peer validation among women. This is a longer topic for another time, but men rate all other men on a scale of 1 to 3 (loser, good guy, rock star). Women rate each other on a scale of 1 to 100 (it may be 1 to 1000, I am still exploring this), with gradations based on clothes, where their kids go to school, hair, butt size, career, husband's car, promiscuity, house size, etc. Their principal social interaction consists of hot-syncing with each other over who is where on this list and, most importantly, which bitch is trying to act like a 62 when we all know she's a 59, right? The point for this discussion is, if the high status girl sleeps with a guy, it rockets his desirability up the chart faster than any single thing that he could do or be. Success breeds success, failure failure. The pleasant mopey guy in his 30s is a leper. If he's a widower, he's attractive. If his dead wife was a high status knockout . . . he's fishin' with dynamite.